Mere Minutes
by WordsAblaze
Summary: (alaw pt.3) An antisocial Alec didn't believe in the stories his mother told him and hated people in general... until he felt the burning on his arm. An AU (malec, because I couldn't help it) scene written for Alec Lightwood appreciation weeks 2017. Enjoy!


_I totally forgot to post this last week, oops... Oh well, better late than never, right?_

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 **Mere Minutes**

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"You've got to be joking!" Alec shouts as someone crashes into him.

Whoever it is must not know him because they carry on walking as if nothing had happened, as if they hadn't just crashed into a Lightwood.

"Hold on!" Alec orders, and turns on his heel.

"To what?" the boy asks, then shakes his rather glittery head as he stumbles over his words, "No, I meant to say-"

"I don't care," Alec interrupts, trying to ignore the stinging on his arm from where he'd crashed into the boy.

"Sorry?" the boy offers, then shifts awkwardly. "I have to go, um, sorry again."

As soon as the boy's turned the corner, Alec swears under his breath, rubs his arm as inconspicuously as possible, and heads to his first class – history – whilst wondering what on earth was in that kid's bag.

"You're late, Lightwood."

"Not much later than you, if your unopened briefcase is anything to go by," Alec retorts, and the teacher sighs, waving his hand as a dismissal of defeat.

As the hour goes by and he's forced into doing group work, filling in worksheets that could bore a dead fly, he can't ignore the dull burning in his arm. By the time the teacher actually gets on to saying something of value, Alec's trying not to show his discomfort, the sensation worse than getting a tattoo.

When the lesson is finally over, he's brushing past people to get to the boy's bathroom, too caught up in his screaming arm to care about anything else. Naturally, his reputation precedes him and most people scuttle to the sides of the corridor, but he doesn't notice at all. He doesn't even care that he's missing sport, the one class he can usually tolerate.

"Oh, by the angel," Alec mutters to himself as he stumbles, glad that nobody else is around to watch him rapidly blink and use the walls to regain his balance.

Dumping his bag on the floor and shrugging his jacket off, he tries to find the source of the bloodless pain, but one look in the mirror and he's gasping in shock; he didn't think the stories were true.

"No way…" he tells his reflection, staring with wide eyes at the cursive writing just under his shoulder.

The cursive writing that neatly but almost illegibly says 'to what?'

"No way!" he repeats, this time not with anger, but disbelief.

After what feels like centuries but was easily just a handful of minutes, the burning fades to a dull ache that he can tolerate. He can tolerate it, but he doesn't want to. Not when the stupid tales his mother used to tell him about finding someone that matched the very core of his entire being could actually have been true.

"No way." As he mutters the two words for the third time, he decides to ignore the inscription on his arm and anything to do with it. Including the new boy.

Alec has missed way too much of the second class to pass it off as having needed to grab his stuff from his locker so he just heads to his maths classroom, flopping down on one of the tables at the back and pulling out his phone as he waits for everyone else to show up.

Naturally, he finds the class utterly pointless and rolls his eyes as they're set a homework that he has no intention to complete, at least not by himself.

"Where did you go, man?" Jace asks him as he joins their lunch table, the one nobody dares to approach unless they have a death wish or something of the sort.

"Hardly matters," Alec replies, yawning.

"Tell me you weren't getting someone to do your homework again?" Izzy rolls her eyes nonchalantly, but Alec can tell she's internally fuming.

"Nope."

"Alright, be like that. Are we still on for tonight?" Jace changes the topic, sensing that Alec won't budge on his infuriatingly mysterious silence.

So the three of them plan their entrance to their party later that night, intending to go as the lightwood trio as usual, but with a twist. It's only been a few minutes when Alec feels the unmistakable pain of being shoved against a locker, with one exception: nobody's even touching him, never mind shoving him into a locker.

"What- Alec?" Izzy frowns. "What's happening?"

Before he can shrug it off, his throat tightens and he blinks in surprise, trying to process exactly what is happening. He's not being attacked but he can feel the pain of it so that means…

It's the new boy.

"I… have to go. Don't follow me," Alec manages to croak, as darkly as he can, before kicking his chair back and running out of the doors, leaving behind a very confused two-thirds of the lightwood trio.

"Of course I get stuck with the idiot that can't avoid getting shoved into a locker on their first day," Alec mumbles to himself as the unexplained pain in his back seems to sharpen.

It doesn't increase or get any more painful, but it's stronger, which he takes to mean the boy actually getting shoved into a locker is closer than he was before. For better or for worse, his theory is proven correct when he hears someone gasp and the laughter of none other than Johnathan.

"Hey!" Alec yells, "Back off!"

"Lightwood? Where's your entourage?" Johnathan laughs, even though that wasn't a joke, or even remotely funny.

"Why? You don't like yours?" He replies anyway, smirking; sometimes it's worth humouring someone you can't tolerate if it means you get to beat them in the end.

"What's it to you?"

"I have some unfinished business with the new kid," Alec says, thankful of those drama classes.

Johnathan raises an eyebrow. "What business could you possibly have with him on the first day?"

"Says the one who just punched him."

"Fine. But he's ours after school."

"Be my guest…" Alec tells them as they sulk back to the lunch hall, Johnathan muttering as he goes.

Alec turns to the new boy, wanting to unleash his rage and shout or maybe just demand answers, and finds himself gasping. He can't form a word in any language he knows and his mind seems to glitch as he watches the boy roll his shoulders back, brushing off the mostly non-existent dust.

How on earth can someone look so… magical?

The boy's dressed in a royal purple shirt that should be pretentious but, when worn with three different scarves and ripped jeans that match Alec's, just looks like a fashion of the future. He's also somehow managed to get away with wearing several rings as well as clearly dyed and gelled hair. Not that anyone's complaining.

"Uh…"

"Thanks." The boy finally meets his gaze.

"What?" Alec inquires, trying to blink so he doesn't seem weird, which is never something he worries about...

"You know, for not letting them do anything," The boy says slowly, smiling in amusement and gratitude.

"What makes you think I was helping you?" Alec asks, scowling, but also caught up in the style of his eyeliner that Izzy would die for.

"This."

He pulls up the sleeve on his arm and twists his hand so his wrist is visible. There, inked over a couple of his veins – and what looks like a healing bruise – is the phrase 'hold on!' in Alec's own messy scrawl.

"That doesn't mean anything!"

The boy tilts his head as if trying to decipher a code and shrugs. "The name's Magnus. I'll be getting revenge on a certain nitwit after school if you decide it doesn't mean anything."

As Magnus – a name which completely suits the eccentric boy, he can't help but think – starts to walk away, Alec calls out, "Wait! Revenge?"

Magnus chuckles. "What, you think I needed your help? One more minute and he'd have been given his own medicine."

"A taste of his own medicine," Alec corrects without thinking.

Magnus considers it, then winks. "If you say so."

And with that, the mystical new boy walks away and Alec just stares in confusion. He's never met anyone like that before, but then again, that explains why Magnus' first words to him are tattooed on his arm. With one more glance at the calligraphic phrase, he makes the decision he'd never thought he'd have the opportunity to make.

The decision, one that he's found and made, is most likely going to change his life in more than one way. It's not that Alec's never made such a heavy decision before, but he's very rarely persuaded by other people, especially people that he barely knows, and he has never, never made a choice that could change the path of his future without taking at least a week to debate it.

He'd made this decision in mere minutes.

He's going to embrace a relationship with his soulmate.

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 _Please leave a review! Any thoughts and feedback or requests for something else?_ _Have a good one :)_


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